Vitamin C: Very little is needed on a carnivore diet, just don't overcooked your meat.Vitamin E: Little is needed as you're not eating putrid vegetable oils, grass-fed meat has plenty.Vitamin K1: Only found in plants, but K2 which isn't measured, found in grass-fed meat and liver does everything K1 does as well as helping bones.

Thursday, 5 January 2012

I have created an example menu following the principles laid out in the previous post to show that the nutrition is sound as compared to the ‘steak and water’ diet of which zero-carbers seem to be becoming more and more fond. We’ll use the standard 150lb person for comparison.

As you can see eating just muscle meat to the same calories is very poor nutritionally compared to eating ‘whole animal’ style, ie including livers, kidney, gelatine, broth, and supplemental minerals.

Unless one is drinking mineral rich water, they may develop several mineral deficiencies; even so, they will lack folate (which increases the risk of birth defects), retinol (risking eyesight), and selenium (risking poor thyroid).

Advising some-one that they can live on nothing but ‘steak and water’ is dangerous at best. Just as an omnivorous diet includes plants for balanced nutrition, so too a carnivorous diet should include more than just muscle meat.

Carnivorous animals, like lions and wolves consume all the organs bar the digestive system, eat the skin, and gnaw on the bones. Humans do not produce enough stomach acid to be able to digest bones directly, and so broth should be used instead for optimum nutrition.

A side note on calories:

You may notice the menus are only ~1400 calories; this should be a minimum, such as for someone trying to lose weight or a small female. Protein should not be increased too high (1g/lb ideal weight maximum): extra calories should come from fat, use a higher percentage of fat in your meat or add fats such as tallow, butter/ghee, or coconut oil. Coconut oil is very good for use during exercising as it provides fast energy.